Why Arming The Rebels In Syria Now Is Way Too Little And Way, WAY Too Late

Some three years ago Obama blinked on arming the Syrian rebels who had Bashar al-Assad’s thug regime on the ropes in spite of the fact that his own advisors as well as pleading Republicans such as John McCain and Lindsey Graham urged him to do so while he had the chance. Obama subsequently gave his “red line” warning against Syria using chemical weapons which they subsequently broke over and over again. And then again Obama blinked because he is a weak tool. After telling the world that he had the authority to order an attack on Syria, Obama instead punted and went to Congress. And because he called for an “unbelievably small” strike, Republicans said why bother while gutless Democrats wailed that “unbelievably small” would still be much more than they had the courage to vote for in the face of their liberal base. So Obama’s tough talk ended with him not only doing nothing but looking like a fool and a disgrace that the Iranians openly mock.

So Obama dithered in Syria and did nothing to help the pro-democracy rebels while Iran and Russia poured in weapons and advisors to bolster Assad. And of course the much better armed and funded Islamist jihadist rebels quickly swallowed up the hapless moderates that Obama left twisting in the wind.

Analysts watched helplessly as Assad targeted the more moderate rebels knowing that eventually the United States would be forced to go after the incredibly radical and vicious ISIS/ISIL army.

Now Obama is acting as Assad’s air force. And because Obama is too afraid to use American troops, when the US bombs an ISIS/ISIL position, it will be Assad’s “boots on the ground” that seize the territory.

Recently, Obama completed the mockery of his presidency by admitting he didn’t have a strategy to deal with ISIS/ISIL even though his advisors had been pleading with the fool to put down his damn golf club and pay attention for a good solid year if not longer.

After several fool’s attempts at articulating a strategy, Obama finally basically put together all his flops into one sentence and said he was going to degrade and ultimately destroy ISIS/ISIL.

“This idea that we could provide some light arms or even more sophisticated arms to what was essentially an opposition made up of former doctors, farmers, pharmacists and so forth, and that they were going to be able to battle not only a well-armed state but also a well-armed state backed by Russia, backed by Iran, a battle-hardened Hezbollah, that was never in the cards,” the president said.

Now the very thing that Obama said was “unlikely to work and was never going to happen” is the centerpiece of his “strategy.”

So on Obama’s very own admission, it is now his very own “strategy” that is a “fantasy.”

It would be better to assert that our strategy is to rely on Batman and Iron Man and Captain America and the Marvel pantheon of heroes to save the day for America. Because at least more people would realize that it is a whackjob “strategy” that doesn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell in August of working.

And at the very same time Obama was screwing up the universe in Syria he was just as busy screwing up the universe with a frankly morally insane policy in Iraq.

First of all, the Iraq War was WON as Obama took office. Vice President Biden bragged:

“I am very optimistic about — about Iraq. I mean, this could be one of the great achievements of this administration. You’re going to see 90,000 American troops come marching home by the end of the summer. You’re going to see a stable government in Iraq that is actually moving toward a representative government.”

And Obama boasted:

“This strategy is grounded in a clear and achievable goal shared by the Iraqi people and the American people: an Iraq that is sovereign, stable, and self-reliant.”

and:

“[W]e will work to promote an Iraqi government that is just, representative, and accountable, and that provides neither support nor safe haven to terrorists.”

The war had been won at great cost by our heroic warriors. But our greatest fighting men are helpless in the face of a coward and fool if that coward and fool occupies our White House.

Obama is a liar without shame, without honor, without integrity, without virtue and without decency of any kind. He now falsely claims that he tried to obtain some status of forces agreement with Iraq that would have enabled him to keep a residual force of US troops in Iraq back in 2011. Bullcrap:

“With regards to Iraq, you and I agreed, I believe, that there should be a status of forces agreement,” Romney told Obama as the two convened on theLynn University campus in Boca Raton, Fla., that October evening. “That’s not true,” Obama interjected. “Oh, you didn’t want a status of forces agreement?” Romney asked as an argument ensued. “No,” Obama said. “What I would not have done is left 10,000 troops in Iraq that would tie us down. That certainly would not help us in the Middle East.”

We can go all the way back to the very beginning of Obama’s presidency to see that he is a liar for claiming that he wanted anything other than a complete cut-and-run from Iraq that his generals pleaded with him not to be fool enough to do:

WASHINGTON, Feb 2 2009 (IPS) – CENTCOM commander Gen. David Petraeus, supported by Defence Secretary Robert Gates, tried to convince President Barack Obama that he had to back down from his campaign pledge to withdraw all U.S. combat troops from Iraq within 16 months at an Oval Office meeting Jan. 21.

But Obama informed Gates, Petraeus and Joint Chiefs Chairman Adm. Mike Mullen that he wasn’t convinced and that he wanted Gates and the military leaders to come back quickly with a detailed 16-month plan, according to two sources who have talked with participants in the meeting.

Obama’s decision to override Petraeus’s recommendation has not ended the conflict between the president and senior military officers over troop withdrawal, however. There are indications that Petraeus and his allies in the military and the Pentagon, including Gen. Ray Odierno, now the top commander in Iraq, have already begun to try to pressure Obama to change his withdrawal policy.

A network of senior military officers is also reported to be preparing to support Petraeus and Odierno by mobilising public opinion against Obama’s decision.

Petraeus was visibly unhappy when he left the Oval Office, according to one of the sources. A White House staffer present at the meeting was quoted by the source as saying, “Petraeus made the mistake of thinking he was still dealing with George Bush instead of with Barack Obama.”

Petraeus, Gates and Odierno had hoped to sell Obama on a plan that they formulated in the final months of the Bush administration that aimed at getting around a key provision of the U.S.-Iraqi withdrawal agreement signed envisioned re-categorising large numbers of combat troops as support troops. That subterfuge was by the United States last November while ostensibly allowing Obama to deliver on his campaign promise.

George Bush warned back in 2007 what would happen if America was fool enough and depraved enough to elect a depraved fool like Obama who would do the very thing that Obama vowed that he was going to do:

“I know some in Washington would like us to start leaving Iraq now. To begin withdrawing before our commanders tell us we are ready would be dangerous for Iraq, for the region and for the United States. It would mean surrendering the future of Iraq to al Qaeda. It would mean that we’d be risking mass killings on a horrific scale. It would mean we’d allow the terrorists to establish a safe haven in Iraq to replace the one they lost in Afghanistan. It would mean increasing the probability that American troops would have to return at some later date to confront an enemy that is even more dangerous.” — George W. Bush, 2007

Everything Bush warned would happen has in fact happened. Everything that Obama promised has not come to pass.

Now the United States will ultimately have to fight a FAR and VASTLY larger war than the one we fought in Iraq. Because now we will be fighting a much larger terrorist enemy who has much better funding, much better training, and far more territory than al Qaeda ever had. Now instead of having to fight in Iraq, we’re going to have to fight in both Iraq AND in Syria. And probably elsewhere as well by the time we finally get to doing what we should have been doing years ago before it was too late. Or else we’ll get massively attacked again as these people are vowing to come after us and cut our heads off.

I have a feeling that Obama’s generals are telling him that if he doesn’t send US troops into the hellhole he created, that he will ultimately be impeached for high crimes. I have a feeling that Obama – being nothing more than a cheap political ideologue tool – is waiting until after the election to start sending in American forces on a level that would outrage and frankly appall his liberal base.

The last sixty years has proven again and again and again that the only way anything happens for good against thugs and tyrants and terrorists is if America leads the way and provides the bulk of the combat force. Nobody’s going to send in the troops that we must have if ISIS/ISIL will ever be destroyed if Obama doesn’t send them in. We can’t win if we don’t have troops to first direct and coordinate the air attacks from the ground and next exploit the bombings with ground attacks.

Because Barack Hussein Obama has failed America and frankly failed the world, we will now have to fight what will amount to World War Three in order to defeat an enemy that admitted it was defeated when Bush was president:

General Jack Keane, former army vice chief of staff: “By the end of 2008, in the beginning of 2009, President Bush’s surge strategy led by General Petraeus and General Odierno, now the chief of staff of the Army, defeated the al Qaeda in Iraq. I saw the transmission because I was advising Petraeus on the ground in Iraq. They showed me the transmissions from al Qaeda that they were intercepting. They said we are defeated, don’t send any more foreign fighters.”

It took a true traitor to America to steal defeat from the victory that American heroes had won with their blood. But that’s precisely what happened as Obama handed our worst enemies victory from the ashes of defeat.

KEANE: The frustration level in the Pentagon among the military and in the central command headquarters who was overseeing the war with the president in the White House is as high as it has ever been. But this president has overruled our commanders time and time again from 2009 to the present, Megyn. And it’s been very frustrating for them. McChrystal and Petraeus wanted 40,000 troops to go into Afghanistan as part of the surge. The president gave them 25 percent less, 30,000. They wanted the force to stay there for a couple years. The president pulled it out after 11 months over the objections of General Petraeus.

General Austin who is now central command commander when he was running the war in Iraq at the end of the war made a recommendation for 24,000 troops to stay in Iraq. The end result was nothing. General Dunford, the Marine Corps commander of Afghanistan and the Central Command commander now General Austin made a recommendation this year to the president to keep a residual force in Afghanistan. He has rejected that and said no. And now he’s rejecting their recommendations to win this war with ISIS. And also he’s rejecting what they absolutely need and what is the noise you heard out of General Dempsey, is that if this weak hand fails, we need U.S. combat forces to come in and take over.

That set me thinking about an incident that has been widely reported, but whose true significance might not have been fully appreciated. Last year, the entire US national security team came up with a unanimous recommendation. These people very rarely agree with one another, but they all told Obama that the time had come for America to arm the Syrian rebels. The degree of consensus was remarkable: Leon Panetta, then defence secretary, Hillary Clinton, then secretary of state, General Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the joint chiefs, and General David Petraeus, then head of the CIA, all advised Obama to tip the balance of the war by sending weapons to carefully vetted units within Syria’s insurgency. And the President turned them down.

ALL of his generals pleaded with him not to leave Iraq and to arm the rebels in Syria; all of his own top handpicked experts pleaded with him not to pull out of Iraq and to arm the rebels of Syria; Obama overruled ALL of them. Obama put his own wicked personal politics ahead of all other foreign policy and national security considerations and now Americans are about to pay DEARLY for it. We know that Obama is doing the EXACT same thing now in Afghanistan as history repeats itself with a despicable fool overruling ALL of his generals yet again. So the net result of that fool’s move is that Obama will broaden the already enormous size of the terrorist caliphate that he has already created and is personally responsible for.

Now the American people are exhausted and our enemies are emboldened and stronger than they’ve ever been. Obama has done NOTHING to try to rally them and frankly nobody gives him a shred of credibility any longer anyway. And because Barack Obama has proven himself to be a worthless fool as well as a man who will not follow through with his commitments to his allies, we are going to be forced to fight all alone if anybody but the terrorists and the tyrants are going to do any fighting for their survival at all.

Obama just punted in an incredibly cowardly manner by first promising NOT to send ground troops in spite of ALL his generals and then by going to Congress for a vote. If it turns out after December that we NEED ground troops in order to accomplish the objective of destroying ISIS/ISIL – and mark my words we WILL need ground troops in spite of Obama’s fifty promises to the contrary – how many Democrats will vote to do so after Obama promised NOT to send them in? That vote will be necessary now because of this vote which was presented to Congress as Obama’s “strategy.” And we’re in for an incredibly ugly mess and a pathetic demonstration of appalling lack of US resolve at a time when the world and our own national security desperately needs resolve.

What Obama did was set up a horrible mess in December (note: AFTER his precious election) for the sake of incredibly self-serving and short-sighted political expediency today.

Given that we also have Obama to thank for a nuclear Iran with the intercontinental ballistic missiles necessary to wipe out American cities – as WILL happen – I can say, “Thanks for Armageddon, Obama.” Because when it happens it will have been YOU and EVERYONE WHO VOTED FOR YOU who opened the gates of hell for it to come to pass.